Scisports is stepping into a league of its own, as the provider of real-time data on football players has been named Sprout Challenger of 2017. The company participated in this year’s edition of the Challenger50 and ended up on top last Thursday. Three finalists got the chance to pitch their ideas during Challengernight at Pakhuis West in Amsterdam. And as a result, Giels Brouwer, founder of Scisports, took over the prestigious award from last year’s winner Hotelchamp.
Going a step further
Brouwer has been working on his system called the Sciskill Index since 2013. The technology is meant to enable the real-time assessment of football players’ qualities. It is achieved due to Scisports’ use of 3D cameras, which register entire football games. Because of this, the company goes a step further than other, comparable systems which also provide football clubs with data on its players.
The only objective worldwide player index
The SciSkill Index claims to be the ‘only objective worldwide player index’ that makes it possible to compare the quality of football players around the world. Every week, over 2000 matches in 210 leagues are analyzed by the SciSkill algorithm. From there, the quality of 350.000 football players is automatically adjusted in an index. For a more in-depth overview of what Scisports’ technology is about, you can read the article on Scisports’ funding round of €1.8M, earlier this year.
Advanced technology
The jury, consisting of Gijs Nagel (DeGiro), Erik de Heer (EY), Kristian Valk (Hotelchamp) and Philip Bueters (Sprout), handed over the award to Scisports because of the advanced technology that the company has developed. The technology is especially advanced when taking into account that Scisport’s market is very traditional.